Hunger
Jayanta Mahapatra
Stanza - 1
It was hard to believe the flesh was heavy on my back.
The fisherman said: Will you have her, carelessly,
trailing his nets and his nerves, as though his words
sanctified the purpose with which he faced himself.
I saw his white bone thrash his eyes.
Summary : The speaker says that his 'flesh was heavy' that means the fleshly desire or the sexual desire was strongly felt by him which he himself can not believe.The fisherman says that he (the spesker) may enjoy her ( fisherman's daughter).He says it in a casual manner, as if, offering his daughter to a customer in not immoral. He is collecting his net and also collecting his nerve i.e. pulling mental strength. The fisherman says in such an air that his words supports or sanctifies his activity, his purpose or situation which he has faced now. It is the bottomless poverty and the customer which the fisherman has faced. The fisherman is so emaciated that his bone of the cheek is exposed and eyes go deep. His poverty is prominently written on his face.
Stanza - 2
I followed him across the sprawling sands,
my mind thumping in the flesh’s sling.
Hope lay perhaps in burning the house I lived in.
Silence gripped my sleeves; his body clawed at the froth
his old nets had only dragged up from the seas.
Summary : The fisherman is going to his hut and the speaker is following him through the widely spreading sands. The speaker's mind is under the pressure the flesh. He is eager for sex. Poet's house meaning poet's good name and good disposition is burning, but hope is there still. Silence has caught the sleeves of the speaker ,as if, he will not be allowed for that crime . The fisherman is dragging up his old net from the sea with utmost efforts causing tearing effect on his body.
Stanza - 3
In the flickering dark his hut opened like a wound.
The wind was I, and the days and nights before.
Palm fronds scratched my skin. Inside the shack
an oil lamp splayed the hours bunched to those walls.
Over and over the sticky soot crossed the space of my mind.
Summary : The small hut of the fisherman is opened. In the flickering darkness of the evening the hut appears as a wound to the speaker. He is so psychologically affected that the sense of days and nights goes away from him. The shabby cottage is dimly lit by an oil lamp, not properly trimmed and all the hours are, as if, bunched to the walls of the hut. The sticky soot hanging in the shack crosses the mind of the speaker indicating the pathetic reality.
Stanza - 4
I heard him say: My daughter, she’s just turned fifteen
Feel her. I’ll be back soon, your bus leaves at nine.
The sky fell on me, and a father’s exhausted wile.
Long and lean, her years were cold as rubber.
She opened her wormy legs wide. I felt the hunger there,
the other one, the fish slithering, turning inside.
Summary : The fisherman speaks shamelessly to the speaker that his daughter is of fifteen and he may feel her as his will. He leaves the room saying that the speaker's bus would leave at nine.This is the culminating point for sexual gratification but a sense of catastrophe engulfs him. He thinks about the father's trick on him. What does the speaker find in the girl of fifteen ? He finds no warmth of teens, her body is as cold as rubber. When she opens her leg wide, she projects a wormy limb.In stead of excitement the speaker feels a repealing effect.The speaker feels another hunger that easily suppresses his sexual hunger. The speaker feels inside his stomach a moving sensation, like the movement of fish. Now he realizes the effect of hunger on human beings.
Different types of Hungers :
Literally Hunger means the desire for food when one feels appetite and in a broad sense hunger is the strong desire or craving for something. In Jayanta Mahapatra's poem Hunger we find two different types of primal hunger : one is the hunger for food and the other is the strong desire (hunger) for sex. The poor fisherman and his helpless daughter are the victims of the hunger for food, while the young man who met with the fisherman felt the hunger for sex . These two types of biological hunger stand face to face.
Two sorts of hunger in this poem project two ugly sides of our society and also two types of men living in this society. The grim reality is that a type of people who constitute the major part of our society are caught in the financial web which is the sequel of the uneven and unscrupulous distribution of wealth in our society.
